Join the AOC – Travel the world – and telecommute!

Last night KGTV Channel 10, the San Diego ABC affiliate, ran a story on the telecommuting practices of the AOC. Click on this link to watch the segment.

As you know, at least one AOC attorney has been permitted to telecommute from Switzerland for the last two years. Our colleagues on the Strategic Evaluation Committee rightly pointed out how this and other instances of off site employment arrangements have been allowed to occur due to insufficient oversight by the Judicial Council and a bureaucracy run amok.

Equally troubling in the news segment is the claim by AOC staff that “due to the budget” no one was available for an on air comment. While many local courts have laid off valuable front line employees, we note that the AOC “news studio” continues to churn out videos and other mass communications on a regular basis. It makes one wonder how the budget has affected the “communications” division. The failure by the AOC to appropriately respond to a legitimate press inquiry underscores the SEC finding that our branch lacks credibility and measures must be taken to restore it.

In that regard, we again remind you to submit your comments with respect to the SEC report and recommendations. We realize that many judges are suffering from survey fatigue, but all of us owe a debt of gratitude to our colleagues who courageously issued the SEC report. Please take a few minutes out of your busy schedule to participate in this public comment process and send your comment to invitations@jud.ca.gov.

Directors, Alliance of California Judges

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As an aside: JCW is a fierce defender of telecommuting for information technology employees as it encourages them to be more attentive to after hours business needs when most of the heavy lifting is done. Attorneys on the other hand need to be showing up in the office – and in court. In California.

Here it is Assistant Executive Another AOC Manager Lisa Galdos dumped on Santa Clara County. How many people is she going to fire? We can always expect a bloodbath when the AOC dumps their waste in our management cesspool.

I’m grateful that the ACJ are still “on it” to bring all this news. I know they have plenty of work to do in their day jobs. Thankfully, they still have their fingers on the pulses.

I would ask this. If you are telecommuting, don’t you save on wear and tear on your car, save on gasoline, even clothes and dry cleaning when working from home, sack lunches, dining out when necessary, day care for your children — and a host of other things I have forgotten about. So why are the wages for these telecommuters still above ten grand and sixteen grand a month?! I have been out of the work arena for years now and perhaps am a “dyed in the wool” old fogey — I won’t be hurt if I am informed of that. But shouldn’t telecommuters be paid less?

I would have LOVED to telecommute, and I would have taken a nice drop in salary to do so! I can’t think of any downside to it other than perhaps using more electricity running your laptop? So tell me, are ten grand and sixteen grand the prevailing wage now?

Recall Tani! She is an affable Asian woman! Malleable too by the AOC! (I don’t care if I’m politically incorrect! Asian woman are dangerous drivers too! Their median cruising speed is 80 mph! They should telecommute in order to take them all off the road. There! I’ll take my jail time in politically incorrect jail.

Ant, I am not trying to hijack this thread, but since you put it out there, yes, I am sure that Tani was selected for the Supreme Court in part because she is Asian and female. The corollary is the fact that Art Scotland, although extremely qualified and always a top 5 candidate for an appointment to the Court, was never selected,

You folks can read between the lines here and I leave it at that without comment.

Been There, the working stiffs know it. Extremely sad, but true. Tani was chosen for certain reasons, and they are becoming clearer to us now. She is doing a masterful job of preserving the Team George Legacy. Unfortunately for all of California, it is a humongous disservice to us all.

It is the New AOC Math! Get ready for a lot more New Math when the new Director takes over at the Death Star. (He is good at the new math). Here’s a hint, its the same as the old math was both at the Death Star, and IinSan Bernardino SC.

He is goooooooooooooooooooood at it. The kind of guy you just love to hate.:)

STOCKTON – San Joaquin County’s small-claims court is in danger of shutting down – the latest casualty of budget cutbacks.

Thirteen Superior Court clerks have been sent layoff notices, and Presiding Judge Dave Warner said the court simply won’t have enough employees to staff small-claims court after Aug. 1.

Small-claims court is designed for citizens to resolve disputes cheaply and quickly. It is the court where individuals can file civil lawsuits against someone – up to a maximum of $5,000 – without attorney representation.

Elimination of the program means that while individuals will be able to submit a small claim, the case will not be heard by a judge until the court can be funded again.

The layoff notices were sent in anticipation of an estimated $4.4 million deficit.

“What we’re doing right now doesn’t solve the problem, it simply lessens it,” Warner said, indicating that additional courthouse budget reductions may come for the 2012-13 fiscal year that started Sunday.

Each of California’s 58 counties have court systems that are funded by the state.
“It’s not going to affect anything already set for hearing. But anything new will probably be pushed way back, or taken but not given a date for the time being.”

In 2010-11, there were 3,213 small claims filed in San Joaquin County.

Small claims, Warner said, can be filed only in the county where the incident occurred. “That’s a problem for the court system,” Warner said. “It’s either done here or it’s not done.”

That will be one of the arguments Warner expects to raise when he approaches the California Judicial Council to ask for emergency funding.

If approved, funding wouldn’t be available for several more months – beyond the Aug. 1 layoff date.

Court administrators have notified the 13 clerks that they will lose their jobs effective Aug. 1.
Warner said administrators and managers, who are not represented by unions, have agreed to take one furlough day per month effective immediately as part of the court’s cost-cutting move.

Steve Stallone, a spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 1021, called the layoff notices a troubling move. He said San Joaquin County has been underfunded historically and had 25 people laid off last year.

Stockton’s high foreclosure rates and increase in violent crimes add to the challenges. “Backlogs are just going to keep happening,” Stallone said.

Stallone said he also is troubled that layoffs consist of lower-paid clerks, and not managers.
“They’re having managers fill in and do the clerk’s work at two or three times the pay,” Stallone said. “So it exacerbates the problem.”

Warner said there is no way of knowing whether the judicial council would award the Superior Court enough funding to revive the small-claims court and rehire the employees.
“We’re trying to evaluate exactly where this is going to leave us,” said Warner, adding that he was hopeful more would be known in the next few weeks.

The state judicial system as a whole was hit with a $652 million reduction. Even though the state has yet to finalize county budgets for 2012-13, San Joaquin County court administrators are making decisions based on their own projections.

“The longer we wait, the bigger the impact,” Warner said. “We’re trying to take an early response to spread out the impact.”

Anyone knows you could get more “bang for your buck” by keeping the front counter line workers and laying off the higher priced managers. Lord almighty! The managers may need more training to cover the front counters as it is. C’mon, people! I can’t lay the blame at the AOC’s doorstep for laying off the workers, much as I’ve love to. It must be the trial court management locally, maybe traceable to the so-called CEOs of the courts — they used to be called court administrators before ronGeorge came on the scene and convinced them they need to pretend they’re corporate managers! Dudes, you wouldn’t last five minutes in the private sector. Re-hire the trial court front line workers!

Ant, on a similar note, an L.A. Superior Court judge “persuaded” a pro per litigant to go ahead with his trial without a reporter. The pro per asked what if I need to appeal and there’s no record? The judge called in his research attorney to take notes during the trial in case of appeal.

Disgusted: this is truly a weird scenario. Did this research attorney know Gregg shorthand? I’m appalled. It looks like anything goes. I appreciate the judge making an effort, but there are court rules about the record. Lord, help us all!

It was better than nothing. Pretty soon people will just be bring in their own recorders and chaos will reign.

What a sad comment , more layoffs and the closure of small claims court in San Joaquin Superior Court. While small claims is not a glamorous part of our work, it is for many of our citizens their only experience with the courts. Small claims is really designed to allow people to seek justice and not incur the expense of hiring an attorney. In many ways it is a court of equity and common sense. While the AOC likes to laud itself for improving ” access to justice”, shutting down small claims is denying basic and essential justice to the citizens of an entire county. Layoffs of valued court employees is another casualty of the JC/AOC waste of billions . Honestly can someone explain to me why we are paying an OGC lawyer to sit in Switzerland and “work” while we are laying off people in the already economically depressed valley right here in California ? My great fear is that those in power at the JC are ignoring all of the above , ignoring the SEC report and ignoring the numerous comments asking that the SEC report be implemented now.

Wendy, sadly you are right. Access to real courtroom justice has never been a priority of the JC/AOC. Indeed their crystal palace ” tower ” view of the world led to forced trial court closures which had never occurred in California history, followed by massive layoffs and cutbacks adversely effecting the most basic services our courts should be providing to our citizens including small claims courts. What a mess .One comforting thing though. The JC/AOC leadership will spend time and money on identifying and then honoring winners of the Ronald M. George and William C. Vickrey awards. Round up the usual suspects and start pouring the Gray Goose lol. You really can’t make any of this up.

First of all I wonder why San Joaquin is closing small claims courts. why not stop the facilitator and mediator programs? As helpful as they are, many courts have been put in serious cash flow problems by the AOC’s delay in reimbursing the court for these programs. If the courts dumped those programs, the AOC would lose the grant funding and so what? The courts survived quite well without these programs prior to 98.
On the Lisa Galdos issue, yes, she was the CEO of the Monterey court prior to her work at the AOC and prior to that she was the CEO in San Benito. She has a JD as well. I know the folks we have been blogging about here so I can say with all candor, that Ms. Galdos is an intellegent, decent person and she by no means is a Kiri Torre clone. Hopefully, she will bring some decency, honesty and compassion to the Santa Clara Court. I would work for or with her in a heart beat.Just a fleas humble opinion. hey more than one of us has landed at the AOC in between jobs. Most importantly, those of us that have a brain leave as soon as we possibly can.

If she’s everything you say Flea, then she’s going to be very disappointed with Santa Clara. She sounds too good for the place. The last Assistant CEO that tried to be personable was run out by Kiri of course. The most recent General Counsel just left in a huff. Don’t know who is responsible for that…just heard about it.

It seems like David lets the directors run everything. You might see him around but he only deals with the judges. Most of the directors aren’t qualified for the jobs they have. They just kissed up to the prior director and are “yes” people that don’t have the respect it takes to run a court limited on resources. With the way the workers are treated, you only want to do the minimum. The thanks you get is some croissants and orange juice from Costco once a year and some platitudes that they don’t mean. Some directors won’t even say good morning to the staff.

The recent directors only promote the people who say “yes” without question. They don’t believe in working supervisors. They want the supervisors to just watch the workers work and make sure they toe the line. Kiri brought the OCD control culture to Santa Clara and she fed it to her directors, at least the ones they didn’t run out. They, in turn, fed it to their managers on down. To my knowledge very few of them have degrees.
Say what you want about Steve Love but at least he knew everybody by name and said “hello” and was seen all over the facilities. David should take a page out of Grace Yamakawa’s playbook. She really knew how to run a court.

Santa Clara no longer uses the Civil Service rules to hire. They test you but you can’t look at your test to see what you did wrong. You used to. You also used to be ranked and then the highest ranked was hired. They stopped that too. This is the way they manipulate the hiring to promote their friends who can’t pass the written tests. This is how they maintain their culture of control. The judges are told to keep out of personnel. They used to have a say about the bad hires and now they are told to back off. It’s all very corrupt there.

Lisa will find that the team running the place is sorely lacking in common sense and people skills and that the line workers in more than one division are miserable and overworked. For some divisions it’s party time—IT? Lots of workers with injuries. You can check the OSHA logs for that. Lots of chiefs and not so many indians. Kind of like the AOC. Very few old timers because they became disgusted and retired or quit because they couldn’t stand the environment. They make the young kids run around like a cat chasing their tail with stupid rules and policies that make no sense.

Today I heard that they could barely implement the $30 reporter fee. That some of the managers took off and left the line workers to implement the fee with no instruction. I believe that was the Probate division. No forms no instruction. Typical. But they have plenty management people and analysts, IT running around highly paid but the line workers don’t get what they need to do their job.

Good luck Lisa. You are going to have your hands full with everything. It’s really an unbelievable bizarreworld.

You absolutely nailed it on Yamasaki. He must have learned that all you have to do is suck up to the judges and you will be paid well. The employees mean nothing as long as your judges laugh at your jokes. The only employees Yamasaki notices are the cute female workers. A friend on mine who worked for Yamasaki in San Diego also told me that he always flirted with the women judges and was particularly close to a senior judge. The funny part is that Yamasaki thought every woman in the court wanted him but they couldn’t stand him. Same here in Santa Clara. The cj sure seems to like Yamasaki. She appoints him to JC and a lot of committees. When he is not telecommuting from San Diego he is at the AOC. Just saying.

Coutflea my experiences with Ms Galdos have been the same. She struck me as a thoughtful energetic person interested in making the branch run better.Hopefully her work at the crystal palace didn’t taint any of that.

I also agree with Galdo’s qualifications. The real issue is why is Santa Clara hiring a highly paid executive in these times? David Yamasaki is already the highest paid court employee in the state but if he didn’t telecommute then maybe they wouldn’t need to hire an Asst CEO to run the court on a day to day basis. I have an idea. Maybe Santa Clara can get rid of Yamasaki and make Galdos the CEO. She would actually work at the court and with savings from Yamasakis $375000 compensation the court could actually stop cutting the rank and file employees? Nah. Yamasaki is the premier suck up to the CJ and valuable appointed asset to the JC. Santa Clara gets shiny stuff from the AOC due to Yamasaki’s “skills”. Maybe Galdos will be allowed to bring some dignity to the court leadership in Santa Clara. The employees will never respect Yamasaki, no matter how “sexy” he thinks he is.

It doesn’t make sense, why should they hire an assistant CEO when all these layoffs are going on all over in other counties. Santa Clara must have a bundle of money stashed away after offing some of there properties they uptained years ago when they Consolidated with Muni court?

Another thought: Perhaps David Y will go back to San Diego to take Roddy’s place when he gets the Dirkector’s job and Lisa will become the CEO. I hope so for the employee’s sake in Santa Clara. After all those years of kiri litter, they could use an honest, ethical CEO

Good for Santa Clara yes, but a disaster for San Diego. As bad a Roddy is Yamasaki has just destroyed the employees faith in leadership at Santa Clara. But the judges in SD seem to buy Roddy as an asset so Yamasaki to SD makes sense. Besides Santa Clara employees have always figured Yamasaki would go back home after Roddy left. Yamasaki hasnt brought his family up here and never invested himself into the Santa Clara court. Take him. Please.

DLC… Don’t know if I could run a Court but I do know how to treat staff. It’s not beneath me to say “good morning.” And I’m grateful for what everyone does at their respecitve desks because without them nothing would be done.

LOL. It sounds like both Roddy and Yamasaki will not make the public cut. Top leadership’s cut is one thing, and the public cut is quite another.

The public is hopping mad at the branch. The public is paying for all this bull$$$$. And, in the bargain, is getting royally screwed. The branch is not paying attention to what the public is saying, and, after all, the branch– and all three branches– serve the public that funds all three branches.